Neo-Ishgardian Shield ★★★

Taken all the way down to base materials, one Neo-Ishgardian Shield is 2 crafting steps deep and needs 3 intermediates — Cobalt Alloy Ingot ×1, Grade 3 Vitality Alkahest ×1 and Merbau Lumber ×1 — which resolve to 8 distinct raw materials totalling 18 units, plus 16 crystals.

That bill outweighs 7,380 of the 13,602 recipes tracked here and 694 of the 1,441 Armorer ones, and 4,464 recipes nest deeper.

Only 4 of those crystals go into the final step; the other 12 are burned by the intermediates, so the real crystal cost is 4 Earth Cluster, 4 Ice Cluster, 2 Fire Cluster and 3 other kinds.

The chain crosses four disciplines — Armorer to Lv 80, Alchemist to Lv 80, Blacksmith to Lv 80 and Carpenter to Lv 80 — so no single class can finish it unaided.

4 of the 8 raw materials come out of the ground, and 3 of them are time-gated: Fireheart Cobalt (2:00, 14:00), Imperial Fern (0:00, 12:00) and 1 other. The widest gap between consecutive opening times is 6 Eorzean hours, about 18 real-world minutes.

Of the intermediates, Cobalt Alloy Ingot has the widest use: 55 recipes call for it, spanning five of the eight crafting classes.